Metro.co.uk’s homepage has changed – and now you are in control

Here at Metro, we have increasingly been looking for ways to let you, our users, do all the work for us.

And from today, what you read and, even more so, what you share, tweet and like will help determine what appears on the metro.co.uk homepage.

That’s because we’ve pushed what we’re calling the News Feed (anyone heard that somewhere before? No? Good) right up towards the top of the homepage, removing a lot of editorially chosen content areas in the process.

So what is our version of the News Feed?

1) It’s a stream of our best content displayed at the bottom of our homepage and article pages

2) It’s algorithmically determined so the order the content appears isn’t directly influenced by our editors. (For a more in-depth look at how this algorithm works see this blog from Metro’s Head of Development, David Jensen.)

3) The algorithm uses real-time social sharing and visitor stats in combination with recency of publishing to decide which content goes where

4) How big the image associated with the post is depends on whether it is trending or if one of our editors has decided it is one of the top five stories in their area

5) As you scroll down, more content will automatically appear – up to a maximum of five times, after which you can click to go even further into the feed

6) If you’ve already read a piece of content, it will appear greyed out without an image

7) You will also periodically see sponsored content appear in this area. We all have to make money but we genuinely believe the content appearing here (written in tandem by Metro and brands we think are doing interesting things) is worth reading and, if you disagree, does not get in the way of your browsing experience.

Our hope is that these changes will help ensure you get to see the best Metro content out there and the ambition is that, over time, we will be able to tailor what you see here to the kind of thing you’ve shown an interest in before.

As always, feel free to let us know if don’t like the changes. Or even if you do. We’d especially like that.

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